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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006842">Small Truths</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackdkettle/pseuds/crackdkettle'>crackdkettle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Small Lies &amp; Truths [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:21:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,311</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006842</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackdkettle/pseuds/crackdkettle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Steve shrank and one time he didn't change back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Small Lies &amp; Truths [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>92</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Stucky Bingo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Small Truths</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An expansion/follow up on Small Lies, partially inspired by a wondeful comment from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giveemhale/pseuds/Giveemhale">Giveemhale</a>.</p><p>Stucky Bingo - E5 - Skinny Steve</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>1.</strong>
</p><p>For the first time in longer than he can remember, Steve wakes up feeling… <em> content</em>. He opens his eyes, blinking lazily, and feels a slow smile start as Bucky’s face comes into focus. Everything is—</p><p>The smile stops abruptly halfway through forming when he notices the cuts and bruises decorating Bucky’s skin. When did those happen?</p><p>He pulls back to take in the picture more fully. Bucky’s head is pillowed on a backpack; the blanket he and Steve are lying on is the only thing separating them from the ground; a rifle is lying between them.</p><p>A rifle?</p><p>Steve tries to make sense of the picture, but his memories are sludgy. Steve met a doctor the night Bucky shipped out… enlisted… agreed to be part of an experiment…</p><p>That’s when he realizes his clothes are too big. He looks down at his shrunken chest, swimming in a shirt made for a man twice his size; yanks up the blanket to see his feet covered in trousers that are far too long. Why would he—</p><p>“We got company!”</p><p>Gunfire, distant but far too close for comfort, follows Dugan’s bellowed warning. Bucky leaps up, rifle in hand, so quickly it’s possible he was never actually asleep. Steve follows suit just a half-second later, snatching the shield from his other side as he goes, heart pounding.</p><p>Bucky finishes checking his gun and glances at Steve, standing beside him in clothes that fit perfectly, shield in one hand, pistol in the other: Captain America at the ready.</p><p>“You ready for this?”</p><p>“I could do this all day,” Steve shoots back with an ease he doesn’t feel.</p><p>That was weird.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>2.</strong>
</p><p>He wakes with a beam of sunlight shining straight onto his face. Holding up a hand to shield his eyes, he sits up and tries to get his bearings, blinking furiously as the spots in his vision gradually dissipate.</p><p>“The hell?”</p><p>The apartment he’s found himself in isn’t totally unfamiliar, but it’s also not a place he instantly recognizes. It’s definitely not the one-bedroom he shares with Bucky.</p><p>
  <em> Bucky is dead. </em>
</p><p>The thought spears through his muddied memories, as bright and brutal as the sunbeam that woke him. Desperately trying to suppress the wave of panic following the thought, he scrambles from the bed—</p><p>—and immediately trips on the hems of his too-long pajama pants. The panic crashes through him in full force as he topples over, pain shooting through his knobbly knees when they collide with the hardwood floor.</p><p>When he rises slowly to his feet fifteen seconds later, he knows four things: Bucky is dead; it’s 2013; he’s in his apartment in D.C.</p><p>And that weird thing that happened that one morning during the war wasn’t a dream after all.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>3.</strong>
</p><p>The next time, he recognizes his apartment from the previous transformation and therefore doesn’t panic immediately. He makes breakfast carefully, holding an underlying unease at bay as he painstakingly pieces together everything that’s happened since the day he was given the serum. The memories are there but hazy, like trying to recall a dream. Brutally, the clearest is of Bucky falling away from him. Since that’s what caused him to revert the last time, he quickly skips past that memory and all others from the war, and focuses on his life in the twenty-first century. The Avengers: Natasha, Thor, Tony, Clint, Bruce...</p><p>Wait. Bruce! He—</p><p>His phone pings with an alert from SHIELD before he can fully grasp the associated revelation. Dread spikes through him at the sound, and a few seconds later he rises from the floor every inch Captain America. He quickly sweeps up the broken plate he accidentally knocked from the table when he toppled out of his chair, pulls on his shoes, and grabs the keys to his bike.</p><p>The mystery will have to wait.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>4.</strong>
</p><p>“Can I ask you something kind of strange?”</p><p>“Strange is sort of my speciality,” says Bruce with a self-deprecating laugh.</p><p>It’s been four months since his last transformation, but Steve’s finally worked out Bruce’s significance.</p><p>“When you change from the Hulk back into being, you know, <em>you</em>,” he says carefully, “do you, uh, remember being him?”</p><p>There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.</p><p>“A little,” says Bruce finally. “Big things, mostly. It’s hazy. Like when you—”</p><p>“—first wake up after a dream,” Steve finishes. “Yeah.” He’s right, then. Unless… “The gamma project that transformed you: it was trying to recreate the supersoldier serum, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“That was the idea,” says Bruce slowly. “Didn’t quite pan out, clearly. Steve, what’s this—”</p><p>“I’ve gotta go. SHIELD emergency,” Steve lies. He can feel the wave of panic building; he has to lock this in his memory before it crashes over him. “Thanks, Bruce.”</p><p><em> This is you, </em> he thinks desperately as he stares at his tiny frame and wan face in his bedroom’s full-length mirror. <em> This is you, this is you, this is you, this is you. </em></p><p>Turns out the gamma project got closer to Erskine’s serum than anyone realized.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>5.</strong>
</p><p>He doesn’t transform again until several years later in the bed he shares with Bucky. It’s less than ideal circumstances. His body clearly doesn’t know what his brain does.</p><p>
  <em>He’s not going to want me now.</em>
</p><p>That thought alone almost reverts him back to his supersoldier state.</p><p>He wishes he didn’t have to admit that his memories are murky (memories with Bucky aren’t, at the least the ones when they’re off-duty, but he doesn’t know how to explain that, and Bucky doesn’t give him a chance). But he has to give him something or Bucky will push further, try to figure out the trigger. And that will be so much worse.</p><p>“We never did anything while I was in that body that I wouldn’t want to do in this one.” He can feel every inch of his skin burning as he stumbles through the admission. It doesn’t matter what he wants to do in this body, Bucky won’t want anything to do with it, why would he now he’s had a taste of perfection, it’s not—</p><p>
  <em>Bzzzzzzzt.</em>
</p><p>He’s never been so happy to get a mission alert in his life.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>+1</strong>
</p><p>“It’s one month today,” says Bucky softly as Steve settles back against him.</p><p>“Don’t jinx it,” Steve murmurs.</p><p>It’s the longest he’s ever gone without transforming. His previous record was nine days: their honeymoon almost two years ago. He’d probably have made it the whole fourteen if an alien attack hadn’t cut it short. Retirement seems to be working though. Not having internet, phones, or tv definitely helps.</p><p>He pulls Bucky’s arm more securely around his waist. They fit so well like this, Steve’s tiny body enveloped by Bucky’s larger one. Protected. Cherished. Loved.</p><p>But thinking about it makes it harder to keep the panic at bay. The cruel irony being, of course, that the panic that this will all go away is exactly what will make this all go away.</p><p>Not forever, of course. He’d change back, eventually. Within a few hours, probably. Bucky would make sure of it.</p><p>“We’ll have to go back one day,” he whispers, even as the panic starts to grow in his chest.</p><p>“No we won’t,” says Bucky firmly. He hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder, presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Sam’s got this. Sam and Carol and T’Challa and all the rest of them. The world’s in good hands. So that supersoldier that died a month ago? He can stay dead this time. You never have to resurrect him.”</p><p>“Unless something big comes.”</p><p>Bucky pulls away from him, but just for a moment; enough so that he can turn Steve toward him and draw him back in for a proper kiss.</p><p>“What’s bigger than this?” he breathes against Steve’s mouth.</p><p>Steve never wants to find out.</p>
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